Alcohol restrictions lifted as Ramaphosa moves the country to level 1

President Cyril Ramaphosa has moved the country to adjusted lockdown level 1 following meetings with the National Coronavirus Command Council, the President’s Coordinating Council and Cabinet.

These are the changes Ramaphosa has implemented effective from 12 midnight:

• Curfew will change from 12am to 4am
• The number of people allowed to gather indoors has increased from 250 to 750, while outdoor gatherings have been increased from 500 to 5,000.
• Funerals will now allow 100 people, while night vigils and after-tears are still not allowed.
• The sale of alcohol for offsite and onsite consumption will be permitted, however, no alcohol sale will be allowed after 11pm.

This increase represents a 4.1% positivity rate.

The majority of new cases today are from Western Cape (22%), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (20%), Gauteng Province accounted for 14%; Eastern Cape & Free State accounted for 12% each; Northern Cape accounted for 10%; North West and Mpumalanga accounted for 5% each; and Limpopo accounted for 1% of today’s new cases.
 
The country has also recorded 101 Covid-19 related deaths, bringing total fatalities to 87,626 to date.

17,649,727 tests have been conducted in both public and private sectors.

There has been an increase of 128 hospital admissions in the past 24 hours.

“This is news that is welcome to us because we have been living under the shadow of the lockdown. We lost relatives, colleagues and livelihoods to this pandemic. Naturally we all want to resume to the activities that we have not been able to do for a long time, including church gatherings, sports events and cultural gatherings, to name a few,” said Ramaphosa as he urged every South African and everyone living in the country to get the jab.

“These new freedoms are within our reach but we will only be able to get there if we all vaccinate. Today we have administered over 17 million vaccines, with more than 8 million people fully vaccinated.

“We have a target of vaccinating over 70% of the population by the end of December, and should we reach this goal, according to the department of health, we will manage to save at least 20,000 lives.”

An additional 16 million people need to vaccinated if we are to reach our goal, said Ramaphosa.

The President further called on businesses to facilitate the vaccination of their workers.

Ramaphosa further announced that the Department of Health would soon be rolling out a vaccination certificate, which will provide a secure and verifiable proof of vaccination.

The certificate can be used to facilitate travel, access to establishments and gatherings and other forms of activity that require proof of vaccination status.